Academic Bio:
Kit Forrester holds a PhD in Education: Curriculum and Pedagogy from Simon Fraser University and a MA in Children’s Literature from the University of British Columbia. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on children’s literature, more-than-human kinship, queer worlding and ecologies, multimodal storytelling, and environmental humanities. Kit has published peer-reviewed papers on topics related to children’s literature in various edited collections and international journals including Jeunesse, Barnboken, and Bookbird. Her short story The Flood won the 2012 Katherine Paterson Prize for Middle Grade Writing. You can find many of Kit’s publications under the name Kathleen Forrester.
Current Projects:
EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT: I offer workshops and speak on the topics of queer ecologies, ecojustice, ecoliteracies, and children’s literature. Be in touch if you would like me to facilitate or speak at an event.
ACADEMIC SERVICE: I am an editor with the journal Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures
Kit’s CV can be found here
Public Conversation:
A discussion of Kit’s doctoral research and process can be found in this podcast: IDEAS- Innovative Dialogues on Educational Approaches and Scholarship, Episode 62: Rethinking Kinship through Picturebooks in Children’s Literature
Background:
I am a queer settler living, writing, teaching, parenting, and playing on the unceded unceded Coast Salish lands of the Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw) and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations. I was born and grew up on the east coast of Australia on Bundjalung country. My ancestors were convicts and settlers from England, Ireland, and Scotland complicit in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and destruction of their lands. In my teaching and writing, and all I do, I try to remain connected and implicated in these histories that continue through the present by listening and learning from Indigenous knowledge holders, by uplifting Indigenous voices and projects, and by decolonizing my own practices as best I can.